- al-Qummī, Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Mūsā ibn Yazīd
An Imām, a polymath, and the acknowledged Shaykh of the Ḥanafīs in Khurāsān: Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Mūsā ibn Yazīd al-Qummī al-Naysābūrī. Without contest he was the foremost scholar of ahl al-raʾy (the rationalist jurists) in his day and the author of several works, among them the precious volume Ahkām al-Qurʾān (The Legal Rulings of the Quran).
He occupied the teaching chair in Naysābūr, from which many leading figures graduated; his fame spread far and wide. He lived to an advanced age, dictated hadith, and was a man of travel and deep learning.
He heard hadith from Muḥammad ibn Ḥumayd al-Rāzī and Muḥammad ibn Muʿāwiyah ibn Mālj, and he studied jurisprudence under Muḥammad ibn Shujāʿ al-Thaljī.
Those who transmitted from him include Abū Bakr Aḥmad ibn Saʿd ibn Naṣr, Aḥmad ibn Aḥyad al-Kāghadhī, and others.
Al-Ḥākim praised and extolled him, stating that he died in 305 AH.
He and the aforementioned Abū Saʿīd were the two great Ḥanafī scholars of Khurāsān. Numerous prominent students trained under them. Sharing their city were masters of tradition such as Ibn Khuzaymah, Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Sarrāj, and several others. In those days the hadith specialists were themselves leading authorities well-versed in fiqh, and the partisans of opinion were fully conversant with hadith—they had journeyed in pursuit of it and had become pre-eminent in its study.
As for today, the muhaddith is satisfied with nothing more than elegant penmanship and public sermons: he neither understands jurisprudence nor memorises it. Similarly, the jurist clings to a fiqh whose fundamentals he does not truly master; he has no idea what constitutes hadith—fabricated and authentic reports are the same in his eyes, and he may even set himself against what is